Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art --
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors --
No -- yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever -- or else swoon to death.
More verses by John Keats
- Sonnet On Sitting Down To Read King Lear Once Again
- Fragment Of
- Sonnet. A Dream, After Reading Dante's Episode Of Paulo And Francesca
- The Devon Maid: Stanzas Sent In A Letter To B. R. Haydon
- Song. Written On A Blank Page In Beaumont And Fletcher's Works